This is a nice note, which examines the selectivity introduced into studies when participants are lost to a study due to incarceration – primarily black men. The paper discusses a suggested change in the IRB regulations on studying prisoners, which would help address this selectivity issue. The Vox article below discusses the history of IRB rules, given that this would not be common knowledge among a more general reader pool.

Students from rural areas have a history of lower educational attainment at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels, yet this population remains understudied. This study seeks to update past studies of rural youth by examining college attendance and choice decisions for students from non-metropolitan counties. Logistic regression is used to study the postsecondary attendance and institutional choice for rural students. Data are taken from two national data sets, the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and the 2004 County Typologies published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which are then combined to conduct this analysis. The results of this study reveal clear disadvantages in postsecondary attendance, institutional level, selectivity, and other indicators resulting simply from living in a non-metropolitan county. The effect of most student characteristics did not vary substantially between rural and non-rural areas, but the analysis did reveal one interesting finding: The relationship between college attendance and choice and a student’s socioeconomic status was weaker for rural students than for non-rural students. Some systematic variation across rural communities was revealed, as well.

Minority Male Students Face Challenge to Achieve at Community Colleges

Although black and Latino male students enter community colleges with higher aspirations than those of their white peers, white men are six times as likely to graduate in three years with a certificate or degree, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Center for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas here.

The New York Times has a great interactive visualization of the widening racial disparity in breast cancer deaths drawn from data from the Cancer Institute. Previously, black women had lower breast cancer mortality than whites, but it is now higher. The trend is not exactly the same across all states.

These data include information about mortgage loan applications, including the outcome of the application, information about the loan and applicant and location of the property (census tract). The Urban Institute has summarized the loan-level data into indicators on the racial and income distribution of borrowers, denial rates by race and income and loans from subprime lenders by race.

Users must register to download the data and provide attribution to the Urban Institute.

Making the Right Call, Even in Death
Lawrence Altman, MD | New York TimesJuly 1, 2013
This article discusses two studies, which illustrate problems with the recorded cause of death in death certificates.

The studies, published in the May issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, support what researchers have long suspected: that heart disease is overreported as a cause of death, while diseases like pneumonia and cancer tend to be underreported. Equally disturbing, one of the studies suggests that the health system is far too cavalier about the accuracy of death certificates.

The Foreign Born [Census Bureau website]
This includes links to an infographic - part of which is included below on America’s foreign born in the last 50 years, data from the American Community Survey on home ownership, STEM degrees, newly arrived, and region-specific reports. There is also a 2010 tables package from the Current Population Survey.